Tuesday, September 30, 2008

This was a drawing done by Mark Malloy, a dear friend of Eddie in his Notre Dame days. Below is a summary of his email to me few months ago, explaining the drawing and photo taken then. Mark, thank you for your email and the potraits. I finally have the courage to post this.

Toh's roommate at Notre Dame from 1987-1990 and his friend forever.

One is the original sketch that I did of Toh many years ago ( we were sitting in our dorm room and he was working on a paper or writing a letter home). The other is a self-portrait photograph that Toh took in 1987. This photo is really great and is well-remembered by his friends from Notre Dame. He gave me the photo as a parting gift when we left college.

While you are getting the originals in the mail, for the blog I have attached the two images below and if you have trouble with the attached files, you (or anyone) may find the images at my website--you can save them to your computer from there :http://www.gis.net/~malloyart/toh.html

To tell you the truth I have not wanted to mail these things to you. As it turns out, mailing them confirms that he is gone and I just do not want that to be true. However, you are the one who should be comforted by them and not me. They have been on our family's mantle since April 1st.

I could not help focusing on the fact that the photo was the work of his hand. He made the print. He mounted it. He signed it: "Liberty, Toh Wei Chee, May 1, 1987"

About the drawing: I drew it in the now-embarrassingly generous time that we had in our room together. He was there in front of me and I could not have known how precious that time would be.